Stress Flashcards
Stress
Relative Prominence of syllables
Acoustic correlates of stress
Stressed syllables may be LOUDER, LONGER or HIGHER PITCHED than the other syllables
Primary and Secondary Stress
Some languages, like French, only have 1 stressed syllable no matter how long the word is
Many languages have more than just 1 stressed syllable in longer words
in this case there will also be 1 primary stress
but there can be 1 or more secondary stress
Metrical grid
Assigns different stress values to different syllables
Each syllable gets 1 ‘x’
Secondary stress gets 1 additional ‘x’
Primary stress gets 2 additional ‘x’s
x
x x
x x x x
æ lə bæ məAlternating Stress
Because stress is relational/relative (prominence is a relative concept), we often get alternating patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables
Examples:
English:
æ, lə ‘bæ mə (AL a BA ma)
‘al təɹ ,ne ʃən (AL ter NA tion)
Typologies
Languages that employ stress are grouped into one of the 3 typologies:
lexical, paradigmatic or positional
Positional
The same syllable position is always stressed (sometimes called ‘bounded’)
Georgian: always on the last syllable (ult)
Polish: always on the 2nd to last (penult)
Another language: on the 3rd to last (antepenult)
Paradigmatic
Morphologically determined: Different word classes (parts of speech) have different stress patterns
Example:
Nouns have penult stress
Verbs are stressed on the ult syllable
English is primarily paradigmatic (but with exceptions)
English Stress
Nouns are stressed on the penult or antepenult syllable (more on this alternation later) diploma marina enigma veranda
asparagus
syllable
camera
English Stress
Verbs and Adjectives primarily have stress on the ult syllable maintain elect object (vs. noun: object) supreme sincere absurd
Again, there are exceptions…more to come on this
Lexical Stress
Lexical stress (aka ‘free’ stress): relatively unpredictable
Russian is primarily lexical/unpredictable
English is partially lexical:
Nouns: canal vs. camel
Further complication of stress systems: Weight
Some languages assign stress to heavy syllables only
Quantity Sensitivity (QS): heavy & light syllables matter when it comes to stress
Quantity Insensitivity (QI): the weight of a syllable doesn’t affect stress
What makes a syllable heavy?
Moras!
1 mora: light
2 or more moras: heavy
Long vowels= 2 moras
V + C = 2 moras
QS and Weight
2 principles/patterns:
Stress to Weight: light syllables can become heavy if in a position to be stressed (if stressed, then heavy)
Weight to Stress: heavy syllables attract weight (if heavy, then stressed)
Stress to Weight: light syllables can become heavy if in a position to be stressed (if stressed, then heavy)
Ex. Hixkaryana vowels are lengthened in stressed syllables
to ‘ro: no ‘small bird’
ne ‘mo: ko ‘to: no ‘it fell’
Stress to Weight Patterns
Wight to Stress Patterns
English: requires that all stressed syllables are heavy
Weight to Stress: heavy syllables attract weight (if heavy, then stressed)
If the pattern of stress falls on a light syllable, English skips that one and stresses the next
The Metrical
The metrical foot
We put pairs of syllables together into a feet (aka binary feet)
We line them up from the start of the word or the end of the word and…we see what happens.
Types of metrical feet
Trochaic: Pattern of SW (Strong, Weak aka Stressed, Unstressed)
Iambic: Pattern of WS (Weak, Strong aka Unstressed, Stressed)
A second property of feet
Left or right alignment:
Are feet aligned to the left edge of the word or the right edge of the word?
Left/right headed: pattern within the foot
Left/right aligned: pattern of feet within the word
How do you decide?
Find words with even numbers of syllables
Bracket the feet
Look within the foot to determine iambic or trochaic
Use this information to bracket feet in odd-numbered syllables- 1 syllable will always be left over
If it is at the left edge, then the word is right-aligned, if it is at the right edge, then it is left-aligned
What kind of stress system does English have?
Primarily paradigmatic (see next slides)
But also somewhat lexical
Example: canal vs. camel
Evidence of the paradigmatic system
Nouns are stressed on the penult or antepenult syllable
diploma
marina
enigma
veranda
asparagus
syllable
camera
English is QS
Animal [‘æ.nə.,məl] Alabama [,æ.lə.’bæ.mə] Reject (n) [‘ri:.dʒəkt] Reject (v) [rə.’dʒɛkt] Sometimes we need ambisyllabicity to make this happen
Alabama [,æ.lə.’bæ.mə]
reanalyzed as [,æ(l).lə.’bæ(m).mə]
Affixing and stress
3 types of affixes
Neutral: Stressed syllable stays the same as it was in the root
Tonic: Affix gets stressed
Post-tonic: Syllable before the affix gets stressed
Stress clash! and stress shift
Where is primary and secondary stress on the word ‘Tennessee’?
,Ten ne ‘see
What happens if you want to refer to the team ’Tennessee Titans’?
x x
x x x
x x x x x
,Ten ne ‘see ‘Ti. tans
x x
x x x
x x x x x
,Ten ne ‘see ‘Ti. tans
